


Dangerous Flames

by FakeName



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Adultery, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 01:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8382787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakeName/pseuds/FakeName
Summary: Angelica deals with her feelings about Alexander's betrayal of Eliza as she travels from England back to New York.





	

When Angelica read what he’d done she felt rage burn through her. She felt betrayed for her sister, and betrayed for herself. She had, in some secret hidden part of her mind, believed that if his eyes were ever to stray from Eliza they would fasten on her and her alone. But this stranger could apparently fill a void neither she nor her sister could.

When Angelica opened the letter Eliza sent her for the thousandth time during her passage back to New York her mind had cleared. She had banished her tendrils of grotesque jealousy to the same corner of her mind she had buried her love for Alexander, now more determined than ever to never allow that part of herself to see the light of day. Reading over the letter, and the pamphlet that accompanied it, Angelica allowed herself to examine her feelings of vindication. She had known since the moment she saw him how dangerous he could be. When Eliza had seen him from across the room she had looked at him with the eyes of a girl, loved him with the heart of a girl, and strived for equality with his brain with the mind of a girl. Angelica had seen him, loved him and could equal him as a woman. She could see past the veneer her sister’s idolatry had placed over him – had, in fact, since their first dance. Eliza had loved the spark in his eyes. Angelica saw it was not a spark, but a feverish fire raging, endlessly ravenous. To be near was to be burned, consumed as kindling for something bigger, something indescribably, beautifully tragic. Eliza had loved his poetic writings, his gentle verses of a courtly love, his gently woven traps of prose. Angelica loved his essays, combative down to the comma, perfectly cutting, brilliantly persuasive. They were as seductive as he was – raw, passionate, and transcendent. His letters to Eliza was the same, posturing as a wolf amongst pedigreed poodles. Prowling, attempting to camouflage, almost succeeding if it wasn’t for the edge of feral hidden under pressed shirts and velvet jackets. The edge of feral apparently soothed by a woman named Maria Reynolds. And Angelica had known, hadn’t she? Had recognized his danger, had saved herself, but only at the expense of her beloved sister, and so her vindication was banished as well.

When Angelica arrived back in New York, being driven up along the same paths she used to take downtown when she was a young girl with a head full of idealistic dreams of revolutions, she thought only of Eliza. She saw her in every familiar tree and fence, in every turn of road. Each familiar landmark brought forth a memory of her sister’s trusting smile, kind eyes, or her gentle touch. How much of her would be left, now that the fire that was her adulterous husband had ravaged her? Her carriage, paid for by her husband whose steadiness and loyalty she found herself valuing over Alexander’s brilliance more and more each day, drew closer to the Hamilton house. With each step it drew forward she felt torn between anxiety to see her sister and the strong urge to run away, to avoid her greatest fears that her beloved Eliza, who stood solid in her memory, had been reduced to pale ash in reality.

When Angelica entered the Hamilton’s house she was greeted by the one person she had no desire to. Alexander seemed reduced in some way. He was folded in on himself in a way he never had been even as a penniless orphan before he wrote a name for himself in blood and red jackets. His light, that thing that had drawn her like a moth to his bright flame, seemed diminished in a way she wasn’t expecting. When he entreated her what little patience she had left deserted her. She owed him nothing, and never had. In fact he owed his entire life, his marriage, everything he should have held dear, to her and her alone. Seeing how callously he treated the precious gift she had given to him in the form of an introduction to her sister infuriated her and she pushed him aside.

When Angelica finally saw Eliza, her emotions and words fell away. Her sister stood staring out the bedroom window, framed in golden light that flared around her. Behind her a servant girl unpacked new bedding. Angelica stepped forward and gently called Eliza’s name. She turned away from the window, eyes serene in a way Angelica had never seen before. She wondered what had happened in the weeks between the reveal of Alexander’s betrayal and Angelica’s arrival. Eliza reached a hand out to her, and murmured her name in welcome. A shuffling at the door made the sisters turn to see Alexander in the doorway, a pathetic dog entreating his master. Eliza’s eyes hardened, her spine straightened, the air around her crackled with tension. Her hand spasmed around Angelica’s, then steadied. She turned to look outside the window, dismissing her husband. Alexander slunk away, cowed. Angelica could only look at her Eliza, for it was her Eliza still, not a husk of a woman who had lost herself in the face of her husband loosing all respect for their marriage. Her Eliza was not who she remembered – not quite so trusting, not quite so kind, not quite so gentle. She had seen her husband’s raging fire at last, and been battered by it. Now she stood before Angelica as tempered steel. Stronger, more durable, and tinged with a brittle bitterness.

When Angelica looked out the window she saw her sister’s bonfire of papers and dirtied sheets sending smoke into the sky.


End file.
